For those who have the same warped sense of humour this Letter can also be had in French.
(Complaints can be addressed to the Blog Council, your nearest newspaper, radio or TV station and when you leave this blog remember to pull the chain)
*Terms & Conditions Apply, if you can find them.

Monday, March 20, 2017

SOUTH AFRICA'S BLACK AND WHITE COLONIALISM VIEW

Dear Lovers of Free Speech,

The
Letter’s Column in today’s The Times puts Hellen Zille’s controversial tweet
about colonialism being not all bad into the right perspective.

It mirrored exactly what happens on social media and in the
press in South Africa.

If you are Black your freedom of speech, which can be just
as controversial, if not more so than Zille’s tweet, can be a lot more free
than if you are White saying much the same thing. And racialism as well as
other kinds of prejudice is also far more serious if you are White than if you
are Black.

Under the heading Zille:Racist
or truth teller? there were five letters on the subject. The first three
broadly speaking supporting Zille’s view appeared to be from Whites with the
last two from Blacks joining the hysteria about her remarks.

The most telling one from Louis highlighted what the wild
dogs of the media conveniently ignored when jumping on the #ZilleMustGo
bandwagon.

He pointed out that in the Saturday Star of February 4 Kabelo Chabala, who is clearly Black,
wrote: “The truth is South Africa
and many other African countries arebetter
because of colonialism. We are better
developed because of the infrastructure that was built by colonisers.”

So there are some Blacks who can see exactly what Zille was
talking about through the prejudice.

“The
reaction? Not an indignant squeak,” was Louis’ comment. He added, “In the new South Africa
everybody has a place. And Whites’ place is in the wrong even when we are in
the right.”

Significantly Chabala’s very balanced view appeared in Saturday Star more than a month before
Zille’s tweet on 16 March. And when our impartial media that is always looking
for the truth, was doing its utmost to cash in on the social network frenzy
that Zille caused, did anyone hunt him down for a more extensive interview. If
they did I can’t find it anywhere.

Social media appears to have been ominously quiet when the
long running case against Jon Qwelane, the veteran journalist notorious for his
homophobic views, came up again. The
Times tucked the story away under the innocuous heading ‘Hate speech laws not consistent’ on
one side of Page 6.A day later
Zille’s crime was splashed across the front page headlined: Zille’s tweet too far.

Compare his case with that of Penny Sparrow, an elderly,
sickly former estate agent. She got into trouble early in 2016 for her tweet
complaining about hordes of “monkeys” being allowed to mess up Durban’s beaches over New Year’s Eve and New
Year’s Day.

Within
months she was fined R150 000 by an Equity Court with a further R5 000
in a Magistrates Court
for the criminal offence of crimen injuria.

Qwelane made his own headlines in 2008 when he
outraged the gay community with a column in the Sunday Sun entitled Call me
names but gay is NOT okay.

He has yet to be found guilty
and sentenced, 8 years after the column appeared.

In it he
lauded Zimbabwe’s
President Robert Mugabe’s anti gay stance. He went on to complain that “you
regularly see men kissing other men in public and shamefully flaunting what are
misleadingly termed their ‘sexual preferences.’”

He
lambasted the constitution and wrote that he prayed the politicians would have
“the balls” to rewrite it “to excise those sections which give license to men
marrying other men, and ditto women.

“Otherwise
at this rate,” he went on, “how soon before some idiot demands to ‘marry’ an
animal and that this constitution ‘allows’ it. And by the way tell the Human
Rights Commission that I totally refuse to withdraw or apologise for my views,
because wrong is wrong.”

Our own President Jacob Zuma appears to have agreed with
Qwelane because in 2010, while at least one court case against him was pending,
he appointed the scribe as the South African Ambassador to Uganda.
Evidently in his wisdom our President felt that Qwelane would feel at home
there because Uganda
has outlawed homosexuality with life imprisonment being the penalty for those
who transgress. The previous death sentence was apparently considered too
harsh.

In
2011 a South African Equity Court
ordered him to pay R100 000 towards a gay rights group and to apologise to
that community. His was a much more serious offence than Sparrow’s when one
considers not only what he wrote, but that the Sunday Sun has a readership of over 2-million. In addition he made
it clear that he had no intention of apologising, whereas Sparrow did just
that.

The
South African Human Rights Commission received a record 350 complaints about
Qwelane’s column. That’s how bad it was yet the Equity Court showed, by the penalty it
arrived at that his offence was not regarded as seriously as Sparrow’s. Did his
colourstand him in good stead?

The
newspaper, which is in the Media 24 stable, printed an apology but why it was never
charged for carrying such obviously contentious muck, only the state will know.
Qwelane on the other hand won’t say sorry. He believes what the paper did was
enough.

That was not the end
of the story. The Equity Court’s
finding was annulled because Qwelane was not at the hearing as he was
conveniently in Uganda
at the time.

The
Human Rights Commission then took up the case in which he has been challenging
his conviction in the Johannesburg High Court on the basis that the parts of
the Equity Act, under which he was found guilty, infringed his right to free
speech.

Various hearings have been held, sometimes without him as
he claimed he was ill and it still hasn’t ended. It just goes on and on.

It’s
a very far cry from the almost instant “justice” meted out to the little old
White lady who didn’t have an editor or sub-editor to vet her thoughtless tweet
before she let it loose on the world.

There are only one or two African countries that have never
been colonised. So perhaps somebody should see if their infrastructure and
other facilities are up to the standard of the ones that have. But I don’t
think the colonialism-was-all-bad school would want that. It might just blow
their case.

If
colonialism and apartheid had nothing to commend them what will the plusses be
for South Africa by grabbing prosperous farms without compensation and an
affirmative action policy that rewards people essentially on colour rather than
ability?

Regards

Jon, who believes that if all South African’s media showed the
same social media maturity as Panyaza Lesufi ( most mature social media user ) we would
all be a lot better off. He’s BLACK by the way.

P.S. Helen Zille is the 66 year old Premier of the Western Cape and the former leader of the
opposition Democratic Alliance party.

No comments:

Post a Comment

twitter

tweet

About Me

I was born in South Africa just before the Boer War whenever that was?
Started life with a golden spoon in my mouth which made eating rather difficult as a result I was under nourished as a child.
Went to a posh school where I only got moved up a class when my old man donated another sight screen for the cricket pitch.
Career prospects were dismal and I was once turned down for a job in the London sewers. "Too highly qualified;"that’s what they said.
I became a journalist when the Police Force wouldn’t have me.
Like most journos I know nothing about everything but I still write about it.
I decided to have my own blog so I wouldn't have to drink with the editor for hours on end to get my stuff published when according to my independent assessment it’s always of great news value.
My religious beliefs are: You only die once so remember, "You can’t be serious and Have Fun."
NEWS FLASH: I've just been appointed the Poor Man's Press Ombudsman by Presidential Decree (Not to be confused with the PRESS COUNCIL OF SOUTH AFRICA'S, SA Press Ombudsman)